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Everything you always wanted to know about gay marriage in Canada, but were afraid to ask.

(Or … “Allan & Randy Get Married In Vancouver”)

By Allan Hurst (allanh@supportnet.com)

Version 1.3 – 2/23/04

My name is Allan Hurst, and I’m a gay man. On Saturday, November 29^th, 2003, I married my husband, Randy Hensley, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

British Columbia is one of two provinces in Canada, which have legalized marriage between people of the same gender. (Ontario is the other.) As of January, 2004, there was a legal case pending in Quebec regarding legalization of same-sex marriage, but it hadn’t been decided as of this writing.

A lot of people – both gay and straight – have asked Randy and I a lot of questions about what was involved in getting married.

Some people wanted to know about the legal process, others wanted to know what we did for a ceremony, still others were curious why we bothered to go to Canada when we could have registered as domestic partners without leaving the States (in San Francisco or Vermont, for example).

This page tries to answer most of the personal questions. The legal questions, we’ll leave up to a wonderful page put up by the American Civil Liberties Union on gay & lesbian marriage, which is located at:

http://www.aclu.org/getequal/rela/canada.html

At left: We both remember glowing during the recessional, but here, we look like we're both in shock. We think our friends D.C. and Judith (just left of center) were in shock, too. That, or we waited too long to serve the cake.

Why did you get married at a square dance fly-in?

The obvious answer is, “why not?” People get married at Niagara Falls, at Disneyland, on cable cars, and riding on roller coasters … frankly, after seeing all of that, we both figured getting married during a fly-in was comparatively normal.

By the way, in the event that you’re not a square dancer … a “fly-in” is a square dance event (generally a weekend) held by a local square dance club, to which dancers from other parts of the country (or other countries) travel so they can all dance together.

Seriously, though … we knew that if we wanted to get married, we’d need to do it outside the U.S.A.

When we started talking about it, Canada offered same-sex marriage only in the province of Ontario.

In September 2003, Date Squares – Ottawa’s gay square dance club – held a double (same-sex) wedding during their fly-in.

When British Columbia’s provincial court joined Ontario in making same-sex marriage legal, we were surprised and delighted. (Vancouver is a lot closer to San Francisco than Toronto.)

That gave Randy and I the idea to not only get married in Canada, but to specifically do so during the Vancouver club’s annual fly-in.

Every November for the past six years, I’ve traveled to Vancouver at (American) Thanksgiving for the annual Squares Across The Border fly-in. Why not combine our favorite mutual hobby (other than sex) with getting married? It seemed like a good idea at the time. (And now, after the fact, it still does.)

At left: Allan (in red) & Randy (in blue) square up for the wedding tip, which was called by Grant Ito and Will Martin. From left to right: Lance, Jeff, Allan, Randy, Eric, and Dan. (Not shown: Michael, standing next to Dan, and Don, standing next to Eric.)

Below: Everyone else squared up for the wedding tip.

Why didn’t you go to Vermont and register as domestic partners?

At this time of writing (2/23/03), although a Massachusetts court declared that it is illegal to bar same-sex couples from being married, it is not presently possible for a same-sex couple to be fully legally married within the United States. Vermont allows same-sex couples to register as domestic partners, which entitles them to some of the legal rights of marriage … within the state of Vermont only.

Even with the February, 2003 same-sex weddings being held in San Francisco … at this time of writing, a huge court battle is promised, and California’s State Department of Vital Statistics is refusing to accept the same-sex marriage licenses for registration.

Below: Allan signing the marriage licence.

Although we hope that will change in the future, at present none of the United States cities, states, or counties offering domestic partner registration provide all of the legal protections and privileges of marriage.

We both realized that we were going to have to fill out reams of legal documents and contracts to properly provide for each other no matter what we did in terms of registering. (For as long as we both decided to remain U.S. residents, anyway.)

Below: Randy signing the marriage licence.

Besides, Randy and I both really wanted to be married, not just registered as domestic partners. We felt this way despite the fact that our Canadian marriage – which carries exactly the same rights and privileges in Ontario or British Columbia as a “straight” marriage – is not legal within the United States, nor is it likely to become legal or honoured here for a very long time.

So your marriage doesn’t mean anything here in the States?

Sure it does … to Randy and I. It also means something to all of our co-workers, friends, neighbors, business associates, and families. It means that we cared enough about each other to establish the most permanent legal bond we could think of, and one that meant something to ourselves and those we care for.

Left: Allan & Randy presented as a married couple.

So what happens if you go to Canada?

In Canada – at least within the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario - Randy and I are legally married, and are entitled to exactly the same rights and privileges of a heterosexual married couple. (This includes hospital visitation rights and medical decision privileges.) These rights may extend to all Canadian provinces later in 2004, when the Canadian Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the case of whether or not the proposed same-sex marriage legislation would be legally valid for all of Canada.

If we’re living at the same address in the States, we can fill out a joint Canada Customs form when crossing into British Columbia or Ontario.

On our wedding trip, we arrived at Vancouver International Airport together, and each of us filled out a separate form. When I walked up to the Canada Customs agent, he asked why I was visiting, and I told him “square dancing,” and that I was also going to be married. He asked if I was traveling alone, and I said no, and pointed out Randy and told the agent that that’s whom I was marrying. The agent motioned Randy up, and processed us through as he would any heterosexual couple. We thought that was really cool.

On the way back, however, we still had to file separate U.S. Customs forms and be processed separately, since the U.S. doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages as legal. (Neither Randy or I have the time, energy, or resources to be a legal test case for same-sex marriage. At least not at this point in our lives.)

How long did it take you to plan your wedding?

Here’s where Martha Stewart would cringe (not that that’s a bad thing, you understand). The initial planning only took us about two hours.

Half of the two hours was spent researching the legal requirements on the web. Thankfully, British Columbia has a very web-friendly provincial government, and everything we needed to know, we found on the web. (See below for more legal details.)

The other half of the two hours, we spent on the phone with our friends Grant Ito and Will Martin in Vancouver, deciding where, when, and how to get married. We couldn’t have gotten married without their help; at least, not with as little advance planning as we did.

We started this process in late September 2003, and were married two months later, in November. There were about a dozen phone calls involved to friends and members of Squares Across The Border, and one 3-day “survey” trip in early November, about three weeks prior to the wedding date.

During the survey trip, we obtained our marriage licence, checked out bakeries, picked out and purchased a pair of beautiful First Nations handcrafted wedding rings, and shopped for wedding clothes. (We didn’t find the clothes we were looking for in Vancouver – solid-colored pleated tuxedo shirts – so we bought them from a local tuxedo store in Hayward, California, not far from Randy’s home.)

What did you have to do to get married legally in Canada?

(1) Get a marriage licence. This costs CDN$100 (about USD$67), and can be obtained from any private company (such as an insurance brokerage) which has been granted the right to issue marriage licences by the BC Vital Statistics Agency. (We used Coast Capital Insurance Services, on Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver.)

(2) Find a religious leader (e.g., rabbi, priest, pastor) or civil marriage commissioner (similar to a U.S. “justice of the peace”) who has been granted the right to marry couples in BC. (See below for details of who we used.)

(3) Two people other than the wedding couple and marriage commissioner must witness the marriage. The witnesses must sign the wedding licence, certifying the ceremony. Our wonderful friends Grant and Will were our legal witnesses, as well as callers for the square dance tip that immediately followed the ceremony. (That’s Will signing in the picture at right.)

For information on locating licence issuers and marriage commissioners in BC, we consulted the BC Vital Statistics Agency website, located at:

http://www.vs.gov.bc.ca/marriage/index.html

It’s worth noting that once a pair of non-Canadian citizens is married in Canada, the only way for them to obtain a divorce is if one or both parties live in Canada for a year prior to filing for divorce. This is similar to Vermont’s civil union law.

Who conducted your marriage ceremony? Was it a Jewish wedding?

Neither of us is particularly religious, although I was raised Reform Jewish, and consider myself to be “culturally Jewish.” We decided we both wanted a civil ceremony. (We may incorporate parts of the traditional Jewish ceremony for our Bay Area commitment ceremony in 2004. Randy loves the idea of stomping the wine glass.)

We were referred to a marriage commissioner by a couple of friends who had gotten married a few months earlier, but that commissioner wasn’t going to be in town for our wedding weekend. She did, however, refer us to the commissioner we ended up using, a lovely and helpful woman named Karen Ell in Vancouver.

You can find Karen (or any other marriage commissioner in BC) by going to the URL above, and clicking on “Search for Marriage Commissioners”.

If we were doing it all over again, we’d absolutely use Karen; we both liked her very much.

How much did it cost you to get married?

We found the process to be surprisingly inexpensive.

Our out of pocket expenses – not including airfare, hotel, wedding rings, or restaurants, mind you – came to just a little bit under CDN$500 (roughly USD$325).

The marriage licence was CDN$100.

We spent about CDN$300 on the cakes (True Confections), several cases of soft drinks, bottled water, paper plates, and napkins (Costco). After Will made fun of me for wanting to buy a box of 200 plastic forks, we decided we’d buy a smaller box at a grocery store – and promptly forgot all about doing so until we were ready to cut the cake at the ceremony three days later. Whoops.

Karen asked us to bring CDN$95 in cash to the ceremony, which covered the cost of the ceremony, applicable local taxes, and her fee. We added an extra gratuity on top of that, because she was not only helpful and friendly, but also because she delivered a wonderful ceremony we were very, very happy with.

There was no charge for the hall rental, thanks to Squares Across the Border, whose members were kind enough to let us use a hall they’d already rented during a lunch break.

Where did you buy the cake?

We started off at Vancouver’s historic “Notte’s Bon Ton” bakery, where our friends Bob & Jeremy had gotten their beautiful wedding cake. The employee we spoke with became curiously unexcited about our wedding as soon as she realized that Randy and I were the ones getting married.

That evening, over dinner, another friend later said she’d heard the Bon Ton wasn’t very lesbigay-friendly … and the Bon Ton bakery clerk’s flat manner suddenly clicked, and Randy and I decided that whether it was just that one clerk, or the Bon Ton in general, we really weren’t thrilled about giving money to a bakery all of whose employees weren’t pleased at the prospect of earning our business.

We ended up at our original choice, a desserts-only specialty bakery called “True Confections” ( http://www.trueconfections.ca ), which was not only very lesbigay-friendly, but which has a truly decadent menu of wonderful cakes. We’d happily use them again, not only because the cakes were great, but also because all of the employees we talked with and met were genuinely pleased and thrilled about preparing our wedding cakes. (In fact, our wedding cake specialist had gotten married to her girlfriend a few months earlier, in Ontario.)

We decided to serve two cakes, both of them from True Confections’ “off the shelf” list. We didn’t have enough advance time to meet with the bakery to design a custom cake (they ask for 3 months)… but we didn’t really mind, because we like all of the cakes on their menu.

The “main” cake was Milk Chocolate Hazelnut - which I feel is a poor name, because only the frosting is milk chocolate; the cake itself is a rich, moist, deep devil’s-food-style dark chocolate. Oh, yes – and the cake isn’t just large, it’s huge. One cake can serve 60+ people. What you can’t tell from the picture at left is, the cake is nearly a foot tall!

Since we happened to know that at least a couple of guests in attendance were allergic to chocolate, we also bought a “secondary”, non-chocolate cake called a White Savannah Cream Cake, which involved incredibly rich angel-food cake, vanilla cream mousse, and just a hint of orange liquor. And strawberries on top, in case there wasn’t enough sweet stuff in there already. (But it was absolutely delicious … for a non-chocolate concoction, anyway.)

We wanted to have our cake decorated with flying monkeys or flying pigs, but True Confections’ wonderful pastry staff wasn’t quite up to that on just a couple of weeks’ notice. We settled for the bakery lending us a ceramic cake topper consisting of a pair of “honeymoon pigs” to which they’d affixed large gossamer wings. We returned the cake topper to True Confections a couple of days later.

You wanted flying pigs on your wedding cake?

Some people want to be married by Elvis in Vegas. We wanted flying pigs. Got a problem with that?

When Randy and I first met, several people each told me “you two will get married when monkeys fly out of my butt.” A few friends with slightly less colorful vocabularies suggested Randy and I would marry “when pigs fly.”

When Randy finally proposed to me (a long story which we won’t bore you with here), one of my conditions for accepting his proposal was that I wanted a cake decorated with flying monkeys, and party napkins featuring pigs with wings.

He immediately understood why, and agreed on the spot. It was OK with both of us that we had to fudge a little, and put flying pigs on the cake instead, and use plain paper napkins. The rest, as they say, is history.

Who took the pictures?

To save money and have some fun, we bought five disposable cameras at a local drugstore, and gave them out to guests. The resulting pictures accompany this article.

One problem we didn’t foresee: the studio space was so huge, that camera flashes were just lost in the room. That’s why all of the ceremony pictures are so dark; it was actually pretty well lit in the studio, but the entire room was painted black, and draped with black curtains. Also, one of the cameras turned out to be a dud, and produced no usable pictures at all.

How many people attended?

We received RSVPs from about 30 people, planned for 60, and had somewhere over 100 show up. The fly-in had about 160 registered attendees. We were both rather surprised at how many people were there. Randy and I alternate between claiming 100 and 120 people showed up. (It’s kind of like a fishing story, where the size of the catch grows with each telling.) It’s safe to say, way more than half of the fly-in attendees showed up. This doesn’t count my mother, who flew in from Chicago for the wedding, muttering something about finally being able to see me married before she died. (She wasn’t ill; it’s just a Jewish Mother schtick.)

Was one of you a bride, or were you both grooms?

I suppose if one or both of us was into drag … no, no, no. Seriously, we felt that we were both grooms, and that’s how we referred to each other. (We now feel that we’re both each other’s husbands, for what it’s worth.)

Technically speaking, however, Randy is the bride. As of November 2003, British Columbia hadn’t yet gotten around to changing the terminology on their marriage licence application form, and my information was put into the “Groom” box, while Randy’s information ended up in the “Bride” box.

The final marriage licence doesn’t show the term “Bride” (or “Groom”) anywhere. Honest.

How did you dress for the wedding?

We felt this was an extended-family event. Both because of that, and our holding the wedding during a square dance fly-in, we decided to dress in something a little less formal, yet still fun.

A few weeks prior to our wedding, we saw a couple of friends of ours (Rod & Allen) at a leather club event in Hayward, and we liked their “leather evening wear” look, so we adopted it.

Each of us wore a pleated, solid color tuxedo shirt, black leather bow tie, black leather bar vest, and black jeans and boots. Our wedding guests later told us that this was a suitably elegant yet understated wedding costume. We were pretty pleased with the results.

How did you come up with the wedding ceremony?

Karen Ell provided us with several sample ceremonies, which she thought would suit our needs. (After meeting with us, she eliminated anything religious or terribly mushy from the list of samples she submitted to us, for example.) We were quite taken with the first of the samples she sent us, and decided to use that as-is.

We added two pieces of the ceremony, which we wrote ourselves: a preface and vows.

At the wedding, I delivered the preface, explaining what was going to happen, and why we were there in the first place. Karen led Randy & I through the ceremony, and Randy and I each read our own vows. (Karen very enthusiastically seconded our decision to write down and read off each of our vows; it’s evidently very common for brides and grooms to misremember or mangle memorized vows.)

During the ceremony (Left to Right): Randy, Karen, Allan, Sally (Allan’s mom), Grant, and Will.

What was the preface?

One of the odd things about getting married was that it caused us both terrible post traumatic, stage fright amnesia. (This, despite the fact that I’m very used to and comfortable with public speaking, and that Randy in general isn’t very self-conscious.)

Neither of us can remember precisely what actually came out of our mouths at the time. Randy and I are both pretty sure that I read (and slightly modified on-the-fly) the following speech that I’d written the week before.

What I’ve put down here is my memory of what I said, rather than what I originally wrote. (Yes, I now wish we’d budgeted enough money to have someone videotape the ceremony.)

Before we get started, we have a few words about the ceremony...

When we decided to get married, we both felt strongly that we wanted to do so in front of not just our biological families, but especially in front of our chosen extended families.

Over the past six years both here with Squares Across the Border in Vancouver, and in square dancing in general over the past eight years, we’ve created our own extended family.

You are that family. [Everybody started applauding spontaneously at this point.]

We're about to start a civil wedding ceremony, which will be officiated by Karen Ell, our Marriage Commissioner, who is licenced to conduct weddings in British Columbia. This is similar to a U.S. ceremony conducted by a Justice of the Peace.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, all three of us - plus our two witnesses, Will Martin & Grant Ito - will need to sign the marriage certificate. When the last signature is made, Randy and I will then be legally married in British Columbia.

After the ceremony, Grant Ito & Will Martin will call a wedding tip, which will consist of two singing calls. Finally, we have cake and soft drinks just outside for everyone to share.

Thank you all for attending, and let's get started!

What was the ceremony?

There was a legal formula embedded in the ceremony. We’ve reproduced the ceremony here, minus our vows:

We are gathered here today to be a part of this celebration, and come to acknowledge the commitment of Allan Hurst and Randy Hensley to their togetherness in marriage.

The essence of this commitment is accepting of another person as lover, companion and friend. It is therefore a decision to be entered upon with great consideration for both the other person and one¹s self. This bond of love between two people is one of life¹s most meaningful experiences. Marriage symbolizes the intimate sharing of two lives; yet this sharing must enhance the individuality of each partner. A marriage that lasts is one which is continually evolving. Each person growing while developing a deeper understanding of the other.

We are here today to celebrate the love, which Allan and Randy have for each other, and to give recognition to their decision to accept each other totally.

I ask you both in the presence of these witnesses, have you come here today knowing of no legal impediment to this marriage? (We have)

Legal declaration
I solemnly declare that I do not know of any lawful impediment why I, (Allan Hurst/Randy Hensley) may not be joined in matrimony to (Randy Hensley/Allan Hurst).

(Join Hands) Question to both: (Allan/Randy) will you take this man, to be
your lawful wedded husband and life partner?  Will you love him, and comfort
him with kindness, understanding and respect throughout your lives? (I will)

Repeat after me:
I call on those present to witness that I, (Allan/Randy) take you, (Randy/Allan), to be my lawful wedded husband and partner in life. I pledge to share my life openly with you, to honour you, to care for you and encourage your own fulfillment through all the changes of our lives. I make this pledge to you as my friend and my companion, to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live.

You have chosen to exchange rings today, as gifts to each other to symbolize your love. These rings are a perfect circle, a symbol of the unbroken unity of love. There is no beginning, there is no end. They represent the truth of that law of life: As you give to each other, you receive from each other. As you give your love, understanding and compassion to each other, it will be returned to you enhanced.

Repeat after me:
With this ring I thee wed. Let it be to us one symbol of my love.

Allan and Randy have written their own vows to each other, and will now share them before all of us.

[Exchange of vows.]

Allan and Randy, you have come together in marriage before your chosen witnesses,  and have pledged your love to each other. I pronounce you what you have already pronounced yourselves, friends forever and partners in life together in the spirit of love and in the celebration of the beauty and joy of life.

Now share a kiss to seal your vows.

Hey! What were your vows, and how did you create them?

We spent a fair amount of time researching other couples’ vows (mostly on the web) before writing our own individually. Our married friends were all quite firm; while they’d be happy to tell us what their vows were, and to look over our finished vows for us, we really needed to write vows that would be meaningful to us. We’re strange, but we’re not stupid. We took the hint.

I wrote mine first, and gave a copy to Randy, to use as a starting point. He didn’t see anything in my vows that he thought was inappropriate, and he wrote his own vows to mesh (quite beautifully, I thought) with mine.

But what did we put into them? We’ve decided to not post our vows here just yet. We’re planning a second commitment ceremony to be held in Northern California in mid 2004, and we want our U.S. guests to hear the vows “live” before we post them on the web.

What we CAN tell you right now is … we figured all of the usual “love, honor, and cherish” stuff would be covered by the ceremony. However, there are some vows that we’d never heard made in a wedding ceremony…

Without giving away the specifics, we figured things like communication, honesty, keeping promises, and not boring each other to death were all pretty important. We also both felt quite strongly that the vows shouldn’t be 100% deadly serious. We added a few things that were not only heartfelt and truthful, but also funny (without being schmaltzy).

I’ll say this: all of the guests we talked to told us that the vows were absolutely perfect for us.

How did you handle getting wedding gifts across the border?

We didn’t. Since we haven’t moved in together yet (a story too long and involved to repeat here), we can’t register anywhere at the moment because we don’t yet know what we’ll need.

More importantly … we really detest the modern custom of shaking down one’s wedding guests for gifts. We wanted this to be about the wedding, not the gifts.

We also didn’t want to anyone to be bothered trying to schlep gifts either way across the border.

Because of this, in our invitation (which was delivered to all fly-in attendees via email), we asked people, in lieu of gifts to us, to make donations to the Vancouver AIDS Project. One attendee (thank you again, Dan!) made a donation in our name to another local charity, Loving Spoonful, which provides hot meals to AIDS shut-ins. We thought this was absolutely in keeping with the spirit of our request, and we were both delighted.

Knowing what you know now, would you do this all over again the same way?

Not quite. There are a few things we would have done differently, such as:

- Instead of handing out five disposable cameras, I’d hand out 20 or 30. (All of those flashes going off at once would have created brighter pictures.) That would give us a lot more usuable pictures, especially in case of “dud” cameras.

- If we’d been thinking more clearly, we would have bought a huge box of plastic forks and a stack of large (not small) plates at Costco. (If one of your best friends ever encourages you to NOT buy a huge box of forks for your wedding … swat him upside the head, and tell them that’s from us.)

- Ask (or pay!) someone to handle set up and teardown. We did it all ourselves … and we really wished we hadn’t. We would have liked more time to socialize with the guests.

- Hire someone to videotape and sound record the ceremony, so we could find out what we said because we forgot everything afterwards.

- Have the setup person set up chairs for everyone.

- Designate a ring-bearer.

Is this something you’d recommend to others?

That depends upon the people involved. We think the best answer to this question lies in a second question: “Would we do it again?”

In our case … the answer is “absolutely yes”. In fact, we’re planning on staging an emotionally-fraught yet legally-meaningless commitment ceremony in the San Francisco Bay Area some time in 2004, for all of the family and friends who couldn’t be with us up in Vancouver.

However, with all of the recent (February, 2004) hoopla over same-sex marriages in San Francisco, we may end up getting married again at a bit later date. We want to sit back and let the legal issues settle out first.

The U.S. ceremony won’t be quite as special to us as what we consider our “real” wedding, up in Vancouver, but it’ll still be wonderful to share the moment with our U.S.-based families.

Randy and I both know that regardless of the anti-same-sex-marriage laws passed by panicky bigots here in the U.S., we’ll always consider ourselves married under the laws of a more enlightened country. (Thank you, Canada!)

[end]

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